Monday, October 1, 2007

Millennium Timeline

What did take place during the thousand years since Ethiopians 'celebrated' a turn of millennium? Here is our attempt, feel free to add or improve it.
10th century - The rise of Zagwe Dynasty.
1119-1159 - The reign of King Lalibela who built the rock-hewn churches around the then capital, Roha.
1270 - The 'restoration' of the Solomonic Dynasty.
1530-31 - Muslim leader Ahmad Gragn conquers much of Ethiopia and was defeated and killed by the combined Ethiopian and Portuguese forces.
1632 - King Fasiledes forces out the increasingly dominant Portuguese Catholic missionaries and closes the door on the outside world, which culminated in what is called the Era of the Princes.
1818-68 - Lij Kassa conquers Amhara, Gojjam, Tigray and Shoa; thus putting an end to the Era of the Princes.
1855 - Kassa becomes Emperor Tewodros II.
1868 - Emperor Tewodros II opts to take his own life rather than surrender to British forces led by Robert Napier.
1872 - Another Kassa, this time from Tigray, becomes the emperor of Ethiopia assuming the throne name Yohannes IV.
1889 - Yohannes IV killed while fighting Mahdist forces and is succeeded by the king of Shoa, who becomes Emperor Menelik II.
1889 - Menelik signs a bilateral friendship treaty with Italy at Wuchale which Italy interprets as giving it a protectorate over Ethiopia.
1889 - Addis Ababa becomes Ethiopia's capital.
1895 - Italy invades Ethiopia.
1896 - The well drilled and well equipped Italian force suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of an untrained Ethiopian army that was severely short on arms but had an abundance of passionate patriotism, thus doing to European colonialism what the Haitian revolution did to slavery.
1913 - Menelik dies and is succeeded by his grandson, Lij Iyasu.
1916 - Lij Iyasu deposed and is succeeded by Menelik's daughter, Zawditu, who rules a regent, Ras Tafari Makonnen.
1930 - Zawditu dies and is succeeded by Ras Tafari Makonnen, who becomes Emperor Haile Selassie I.
1935 - Italy invades Ethiopia, again.
1936 - Italians capture Addis Ababa, king of Italy made emperor of Ethiopia. While Il Duce Mussolini and his cohorts were busy with their impossible dream of creating an Italian East Africa by merging Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia on paper, Ethiopian patriots were busy depriving their forces time to settle by mounting a resistance that was to prove fatal to the grand colonial fantasy. Emperor Haile Selassie fled to Europe and opened a diplomatic front against the invasion.
1941 - Patriots of the Ethiopian resistance - the arbegnoch - ,greatly aided by British and Commonwealth troops, defeat the Italians, and restore Haile Selassie to his throne.
1952 - United Nations federates Eritrea with Ethiopia.
1962 - Haile Selassie annexes Eritrea, which becomes an Ethiopian province.
1963 - First conference of the Organisation of African Unity held in Addis Ababa.
1973-74 - An estimated 200,000 people die in Wallo province as a result of famine.
1974 - Haile Selassie overthrown in military coup. General Aman Andom becomes head of state.
1975 - Haile Selassie dies in mysterious circumstances while in custody. General Aman was killed by the Derg and replaced by General Teferi Benti.
1977 - General Teferi killed and replaced by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.
1977-79 - Thousands of government opponents die in "Red Terror" orchestrated by Mengistu; collectivization of agriculture begins; Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Party(EPRP) Tigrayan People's Liberation Front(TPLF) launch wars against the regime.
1977 - Somalia invades Ethiopia's Ogaden region.
1978 - Somali forces defeated with massive help from the Soviet Union and Cuba.
1984-85 - Worst famine in a decade strikes; Western food aid sent; thousands forcibly resettled from Eritrea and Tigre.
1987 - Mengistu elected president under a new constitution.
1988 - Ethiopia and Somalia sign a peace treaty.
1991 - Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front captures Addis Ababa after Mengistu fled the country; Eritrea establishes its own provisional government pending a referendum on independence.
1992 - Haile Selassie's remains discovered under a palace toilet.
1993 - Eritrea becomes independent following referendum.
1994 - New constitution divides Ethiopia into ethnically-based regions.
1995 - Negasso Gidada becomes titular president; Meles Zenawi assumes post of prime minister.
1998 - Ethiopian-Eritrean border dispute erupts into armed clashes.
1999 - Ethiopian- Eritrean border clashes turn into a full-scale war.
2000 June - Ethiopia and Eritrea sign a ceasefire agreement which provides for a UN observer force to monitor the truce and supervise the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Eritrean territory.
2000 November - Haile Selassie buried in Addis Ababa's Trinity Cathedral.
2000 December - Ethiopia and Eritrea sign a peace agreement in Algeria, ending two years of conflict. The agreement establishes commissions to delineate the disputed border and provides for the exchange of prisoners and the return of displaced people.
2001 24 February - Ethiopia says it has completed its troop withdrawal from Eritrea in accordance with UN-sponsored agreement.
2002 April - Ethiopia, Eritrea accept a new common border, drawn up by an independent commission, though both sides then lay claim to the town of Badme.
2003 April - Independent boundary commission rules that the disputed town of Badme lies in Eritrea. Ethiopia says the ruling is unacceptable.
2004 January-February - Nearly 200 killed in ethnic clashes in the western region of Gambella. Tens of thousands flee area.
2004 March - Start of resettlement program to move more than two million people away from parched, over-worked highlands.
2004 November - Ethiopia says it accepts "in principle" a boundary commission's ruling on its border with Eritrea. But a protracted stalemate over the disputed town of Badme continues.
2005 March - US-based Human Rights Watch accuses army of "widespread murder, rape and torture" against Gambella region's ethnic Anuak people. Military angrily rejects charge.
2005 April - First section of Axum obelisk, looted by Italy in 1937, is returned to Ethiopia from Rome.
2005 May - Third multi-party elections: Protests over alleged fraud precipitate violent protests in which around 40 people are shot dead.
2005 August-September - Election re-runs in more than 30 seats: Officials say the ruling party gains enough seats to form a government.
2005 November - 46 protesters die in fresh clashes over May's elections. Thousands of people, including opposition politicians and newspaper editors, are detained.
2005 December - International commission, based in The Hague, rules that Eritrea broke international law when it attacked Ethiopia in 1998.
More than 80 people, including journalists and many opposition leaders, are charged with treason and genocide over November's deadly clashes.
2006 May - Six political parties and armed groups form an opposition alliance, the Alliance for Freedom and Democracy, at a meeting in the Netherlands.
Several bomb blasts hit Addis Ababa. No organization claims responsibility.
2006 August - Several hundred people are feared to have died and thousands are left homeless as floods hits the north, south and east.
2006 September - Ethiopia denies that its troops have crossed into Somalia to support the transitional government in Baidoa.
2006 October - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urges Eritrea to pull back the troops it has moved into the buffer zone on the Ethiopian border. The UN says the incursion is a major ceasefire violation.
War of words between Ethiopia and Islamists controlling much of Somalia. Prime Minister Meles says Ethiopia was "technically" at war with the Islamists because they had declared holy war on his country.
2006 November - UN report says several countries - including Ethiopia - have been violating a 1992 arms embargo on Somalia by supplying arms to the interim government there. Ethiopia's arch enemy Eritrea is accused of supplying the rival Islamist administration.
Ethiopia and Eritrea reject a proposal put forward by an independent boundary commission as a way around a four-year impasse over the demarcation of their shared border.
2006 December - Exiled former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam is convicted, in absentia, of genocide at the end of a 12-year trial. In January 2007 he is sentenced to life in prison.
Ethiopia confirms it is battling Islamic militia in Somalia. In fierce fighting, Ethiopian aircraft, tanks and artillery support forces of the Somali transitional government. The Islamists are routed.
2007 February - Around 50,000 Somalis have crossed into Ethiopia in the past six months to flee instability at home, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports.
2007 March - A group of British embassy workers and their Ethiopian guides are kidnapped in the northern Afar region bordering on Eritrea. They are eventually released in Eritrea.
2007 April - Gunmen attack a Chinese-owned oil facility in the south-east Somali region, killing 74 people working there.
2007 June - Opposition leaders are given life sentences over mass protests that followed elections in 2005, but are later pardoned.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You write very well.